Thursday, November 18, 2010

VeganMoFo: Uzbekistan In My Pie Hole!

That's right, we had Uzbek food for dinner last night! How cool is that? I'll tell you the truth, I don't know that much about Uzbekistan... other than what we learned on wikipedia's Uzbekistan profile before dinner last night. However, when I was flipping through my cookbooks, I noticed a lot of compelling recipes from Uzbekistan, and decided to investigate.

Here's the whole meal!

First up was Caspian Butternut Squash Soup with Bulgur. This recipe (and all the others featured today) is from The Silk Road, a Vegetarian Journey. Such a wonderful cookbook! This soup has onions, bulgur, butternut squash, orange juice, lime juice, spices, and rice flour to thicken it. My mom, who came over after yoga class, took one look at it and made this telling comment: "That looks indigenous." Ha! Well, my mom and I both liked the soup, but Mr. Vegan Eats and Treats rejected it. I think it would be better without the rice flour for thickening, because the flavors are quite nice, but the thickness is a bit off-putting. Fortunately, I have a metric ton of it left over. It's always so perfect when Mr VE&T doesn't like something and I've made a huge pot of it!! ergh! Oh well, I"ll slog my way through the leftovers. I'm not sure if I'd make this again, but if I do, I"ll definitely leave out the rice flour.

Next up: Uzbek Potato Salad, For The Win!!!

Holy YUMS. This stuff was great... and very different from any potato salad I'd had before. Apples, celery, walnuts, potatoes, peas, and carrots... tossed with a wonderful curried dressing. It is endlessly wonderful and amazing to me that you can take the same familiar ingredients and arrange them in new and exciting ways. This salad was composed entirely of ingredients I had in the cupboard, but was a totally new flavor sensation. Mr. VE&T was especially nutso for the dressing and asked me to take note of it so that we could have it again on all kinds of salads.

And finally, Tashkent Onion Bread, my true love

Here's what my mom said "Well, it's all good, but this is the real winner!" So true, Mom! From the very first time I flipped through this book, this recipe caught my eye. I am so grateful to my Around the World in 30 Days project to finally motivate me to make these babies!!!! While they were baking, the whole house was smelling so incredible, and I actually had this thought: "Oh my gosh, it smells so good, I have to put that smell on my blog!" Well, friends, I wish I could.

Mr. VE&T took one bite and said "This is the best bread product you've ever made!" Fer realz. The crust tastes like a perfect pizza crust, and the filling is a combo of onions and garlic and poppy seeds and cumin seeds and sesame seeds. These babies are big time yum.

This is the experience you will have when you eat Tashkent Onion Bread.

Good work, Uzbekistan, you definitely delivered! Where will we land for our next meal?? Come back tomorrow to find out!

YAY! I'm so glad you did Uzbeki. I have planned to cook some uzbeki-food next week. I was thinking about the onion bread, I found a recipe for it, but I think I decided on something else. I will try it sometime though!